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R. SELLARS finds unclear and unsatisfactory in various

M ways the account I have given of the relation betweenstatements which I called "presupposition." He undertakes toclarify this notion by giving an alternative account of the rela-tion, for which he claims: (a) that it vindicates Russell's analysisboth of statements containing definite descriptions and of uni-versal and particular statements of ordinary discourse, and (b)that at the same time it accommodates those facts of language towhich I was seeking to draw attention and which might seem in-compatible with the correctness of Russell's analyses. In whatfollows I shall first argue that the difficulties which Sellars findsin my account do not exist. Then I shall draw attention to thefact that Sellars offers, not one alternative account of the rela-tion between presupposed and presupposing statements, but twoalternative and incompatible accounts, and that he applies oneof these accounts to one set of cases and the other to another set,without giving any reason for so discriminating between them.I shall suggest that the explanationof his so discriminating issimply a parti pris in favor of what is in question, namely thecorrectness of Russell's analyses, and, in general, that Sellars isanimated by a metaphysical belief that the symbolism of PrincipiaMathematicasomehow embodies the real logic of ordinary lan-guage. I shall then discuss some minor points in Sellars' articleand shall conclude with certain qualifications of my own thesisas stated in the publications to which Sellars refers. (i) Sellars says that I "nowhere give an explicit analysis ofx presupposesy" and that I leave various questions about this re-lation unanswered. I think the answers to most of his questionsare to be found on page I 75 of Introductionto Logical Theory (cf.also p. 2I3). "S presupposes S'" is defined as follows: "Thetruth of S' is a necessary condition of the truth or falsity of S." 1 1 Strictly speaking,I should here write "the statementthat S" instead of4"S";elsewhere,for example, I shall write the phrase"that S." But the riskof confusionhere is small. 2i6

It will be noted that this definition has the consequence that S'is not in any ordinary sense a component of what is asserted byS. It will also be noted that the definition makes no reference atall to the beliefs of speakers or hearers. It does, however, have thefairly obvious consequence that, where S presupposes S', it wouldbe incorrect (or deceitful-the cases are different) for a speakerto assert S unless he believed or took for granted that S'. But itcertainly does not have the consequence that if it is for thisreason incorrect for a given speaker to assert S, then S does nothave a truth-value; nor does it follow that if it is not incorrectfor a certain speaker to assert S, then S does have a truth-value.Whether or not S has a truth-value depends on one thing, viz.,whether S' is true. Whether or not it is correct for a speaker toassert S depends on quite another thing (I do not mean, on thisthing alone): viz., whether or not the speaker believes that S'.Sellars, in Section IV of his article, seems to think that I amcommitted to saying that the conditions under which S has atruth-value are the same as the conditions under which it is cor-rect for a speaker to assert S, or, perhaps, to think that I cannotregard the speaker's beliefs as relevant to the correctnessof theassertion without making this identification. But this is simply amistake; so none of the embarrassing consequences which Sellarsdraws from it holds. In fact, of course, as far as my definitionand its consequences go, it is perfectly possible both for S tolack a truth-value and for it to be a correct use of language forsomeone to assert S; and this will be so in the case where thatperson mistakenly believes that the presupposed statement S' istrue. In the same section, Sellars says that if what the speaker be-lieves is left out of account then it is difficult to see how thepresupposing statement can "involve" the presupposed state-ment in any other way than by asserting it. But the whole pointof the relation of presupposition, as I conceive it, is just that thisis possible-and familiar. Perhaps it will be easier to see how itis possible if we consider, not a statement, but a question (e.g.,"Has Jones stopped beating his grandmother?") or a command(e.g., "Jones, you are to stop beating your grandmother!").Neither the question nor the command assertsanything. But both

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may be said to involve (presuppose) the truth of the statement

that Jones was in the habit of beating his grandmother: in thatthe question does not admit of a simple "Yes" or "No" answer,the command can be neither obeyed nor disobeyed, unless thatstatement is true. Similarly, when one statement presupposesanother, the first does not admit of an assignment of a truth-value unless the second is true. (2) The two alternative accounts given by Sellars of the rela-tion between presupposed and presupposing statements emergerespectively in Sections V and VI of his article. They will bereferred to as account A and account B. On account A, the re-lations between the presupposing statement (S) and the pre-supposed statement (S') are given by the propositions:(i) S entails (or incorporates the assertion of) S', and hence if S' isfalse, S is false;(ii) it is incorrect for a speaker either to assert S or to deny it (i.e., saythat it is false) unless he believes that S' and believes that his hearershares this belief.On account B, the relations are as follows:(i) S does not entail S', and the truth-value of S is in no way dependenton the truth-value of S';(ii) it is incorrect for a speaker either to assert S or to deny it (i.e., saythat it is false) unless he believes that S' and believes that his hearershares this belief.It will be noted that the second element in each account isidentical. The difference lies in the first element. It will also benoted that the first element in neither account agrees with thedefinition given by me of "presupposition," but that the secondelement has affinities with one of the consequences of my defini-tion. (I think Sellars would perhaps agree that, on any theory,his second element is a little too strong as it stands, and shouldbe weakened, say, by the addition of the clause "or at least doesnot believe that his hearer believes that S' is false." But this isa minor point.) Examples to which Sellars applies account A, in Section V,include the "grandmother case," and the case of statements con-taining definite descriptions. Thus, according to Sellars, a state-

ment (S) made by the use of a sentence of the form "The so-and-so is such-and-such" contains three asserted componentscorresponding, with one minor modification, to the three com-ponents of Russell's original analysis. We may refer to these asrespectively s1 (which states that the existence-condition is satis-fied), s2 (which states that the uniqueness-condition is satisfied),and s3 (which states that there is nothing which both answers tothe description in question-duly expanded to get rid of Sellars'"ellipsis"-and lacks a certain predicate). The components s1and s2 are presupposed, in the sense of account A, by the state-ment S as a whole. (Sellars in fact concentrates his attention oncomponent s2, but would, I take it, say that s1 was similarly re-lated to S.) Account B, on the other hand, is applied, in SectionVI, to universal statements, of the forms "All f's are g" and"No f's are g." Here the entire assertion-content of the state-ments is said to be given by the forms "- (r3x) (fx. -gx)" and"cc' (ax) (fx.gx)" respectively. The presupposed statement in eachcase is the statement that the subject-class is not empty. Sincethese cases fall under account B, the actual truth-value of theuniversal statements is quite independent of the truth-value ofthe presupposed statement, though it is incorrect to assert ordeny the universal statement unless the presupposed statementis believed to be true. Now there is surely no reason whatever, except a determina-tion to adhere at all costs to orthodox modern analyses, forsimultaneously adopting account A in the case of statementscontaining definite descriptions and account B in the case ofuniversal statements. What is there, except a partiality for theTheory of Descriptions, to stop Sellars from adopting account Bfor the first case; from saying, that is, that the whole assertion-content of a statement containing a definite description is givenby s3, so that its truth-value is quite independent of the truth-values of the presupposed statements, although it is incorrect toassert it or call it false unless etc.? Alternatively, what is there,except a partiality for the class-inclusion and -exclusion forms,to stop Sellars from adopting account A for the case of universalstatements and declaring that the statement that the subject-class is not empty is one of the asserted components of these 219

statements? I ask these questions, because the reasons which

seem to me good reasons against adopting either these or anyother analyses in terms of accounts A and B are not reasonswhich it is open to Sellars to give; for they involve acceptanceof precisely the idea which he repudiates, viz., the idea that apresupposing statement lacks a truth-value if the presupposedstatement is false. But the capriciousness with which Sellars now associates, nowrefuses to associate, a presupposition-relation with dependenceof the truth-value of the presupposing statement on that of thepresupposed statement is greater than I have so far indicated.For his program requires that in the case of particular, as op-posed to universal, statements, the presupposed statement (thatthe subject-class is not empty) is a part of the assertion-contentof the presupposing statement. Account B applies to the top twopropositional forms of the fourfold schedule, account A to thebottom two. Who, if he had never seen a bound variable, wouldhave supposed that the difference between saying that all hisshirts were at the laundry, and that some of them were, involvedthis difference? The situation is this. Sellars can reconcile himself to the logicalforce which universal and particular propositions have in ordi-nary discourse only if he can somehow explain these facts tohimself in terms of the negatively and positively existential formsof Principia Mathematica. For (he thinks) it is these forms and theirlogical relations which show the ultimate logical structure oflanguage. But why should language have just one ultimate logi-cal structure? And why, if it had one, should it be this one? Howvery extraordinary, if the real structure of natural ways of talkingshould be found to lie in artificial ways of writing! Sellars says,for example, that "the fact remains that the validity of the movefrom 'All A is B' to 'Some A is B' rests ultimately on the validityof the move from 'A C B' and 'There are A's' to 'AB s 0'."But how does he know that the one "rests ultimately" on theother? Why should it rest on anything? Perhaps it does not needanything to rest on. Again Sellars says: "When it comes to tell-ing us what A, E, I, and 0 statements do assert . . . Strawson iseven less explicit." But what is there' to be explicit about here?

There is no mystery about it. When I assert that all the fuseshave blown, that is what I assert. Of course what Sellars is askingis: What do I think they assert in terms of the negatively andpositively existential forms of Principia Mathematica? But thisquestion does not arise. For they do not assert anything in termsof these forms. They are different(though not unrelated) forms. (3) In preparing the ground for his own accounts (especiallyaccount A) of the relations between presupposing and presup-posed statements, Sellars seeks to show in Section III of hisarticle that, "questions of manners aside," it may be incorrectusage to say of a statement that it is false even though (a) it isfalse and (b) one believes it is false. He illustrates his point fromthe case of fictional narrations about historical persons. If weoverlook his point, he says, we may draw mistaken conclusionsabout this case. Thus "from the fact that it would be obviouslyinappropriate to say 'That is false' to a storyteller who has justsaid, 'Prince Edward exchanged his clothes for the rags of thebeggar boy,' even though one believes on good evidence thatsuch an incident never occurred, one would be strongly temptedto conclude that the original statement was notfalse, and hence,since not true, was neithertruenorfalse"; and this would be wrong.But what does Sellars mean by "the original statement" here?The statement that Prince Edward exchanged his clothes, etc.?But the storyteller made no such statement. Of course the story-teller uttered the words "Prince Edward exchanged his clothes,"etc. But-someone might object-aren't these words what hesaid? and aren't they the same words as an historian might haveused? and so isn't what he said false? Of course, one could say, ifone liked, that what he said was false, meaning by this thatanyone who uttered those words and was also making a statementwould be making a false statement. But it does not follow fromthis that the storyteller, in uttering these words, was making afalse statement. The point is that the words "true" and "false"and the word "statement" belong together to one way, or classof ways, of using language; but telling stories is a way of usinglanguage which falls outside this class. Sellars also writes: "Fic-tion contains many devices to signalize that statements made inits course are not to be 'taken seriously.'" But he ought rather to

write: "Fiction contains many devices to signalize that sentences

used in its course are not to be taken as being used to make statements." He writes as if the word "statement" and the words "true" and "false" contained no reference at all to a certain way of using language, as if you could decide whether a group of words in use constituted a statement or not without considering the use that was being made of them. Suppose a company commander gives his sergeant-major the order "The men will spend the morning cleaning their equip- ment" and then countermands the order. Would this be the right description of the situation: "What the company com- mander said in fact turned out to be false, though it would be incorrect to say so"? This description could be right only as a philosophical joke. Yet the same words uttered in another con- text, by another person, might well be used to say something which turned out to be false. One further comment. Sellars writes: "One says 'That is false' when one takes the other person's statement to be the expression of a belief." These particular words are surely at least as natu- rally used when one takes it to be a lie. (4) In Section II of his article, Sellars distinguishes between (among others) two kinds of ''ambiguity." The first is mani- fested by sentences containing certain words, among them the word "this." Sentences such as "This hat is yours," "This wine is good," "This room is airy," "This solution is elegant" may be uttered in many different situations, and in each case the context or setting of the utterance will be an essential element in the determination of the reference made by the use of the phrases "This hat," "This wine," etc. Contrasted with these are sentences which manifest a different kind of "ambiguity" and which Sellars calls "incomplete" or "elliptical." Examples analogous with his own would be the sentence "James is," which might be uttered as an answer to the question "Who is going to drive?" or to the question "Who is going to walk?"; orthe sentence "Castor oil is," which might be uttered as a re-joinder to the assertion "Castor oil isn't harmful" or to theassertion "Castor oil isn't horrible." Now it is clear that thereare many differences between the two classes of sentences here

contrasted by Sellars, and many differences between his two

sorts of ambiguity. It also seems very reasonable to call the secondset of sentences, as opposed to the first, incomplete or elliptical.If one had to justify these phrases, I think one would be inclinedto say that the sentences were formally, linguistically deficient, thatthey did not come up to a certain standard of how a nonconver-sational English sentence should be composed; and one wouldpoint out that in their conversational setting, the deficiency isremedied by the linguistic context, that the surrounding remarkssupply the missing words. But Sellars' next suggestion I find utterly puzzling. For hesays that such a sentence as "The table is large" is incompleteor elliptical in the same sense as sentences of his second class;that this sentence has this kind of ambiguity (in addition to thefirst kind). I fail to see any reason whatever for saying this.Suppose I am writing an account of a certain house and gardens,and in my account there occur the following two sentences:"In the center of the park is a pond. This pond is used bychildren for sailing boats on. . . ." Now, according to Sellars, ifin revising my account, I were to replace the words "This pond"by the words "The pond," I should be replacing a complete andnonelliptical sentence by an incomplete and elliptical sentence!How would Sellars in this case make good the ellipsis and supplythe missing words? Would the nonelliptical version run: "Thepond referred to in the sentence before this one"? In general, Sellars thinks that a sentence containing a singular"the"-phrase can be rendered nonelliptical only by supplement-ing the "the"-phrase by some phrase containing what he callsan "ego-centric" expression. But as far as the actual working oflanguage goes, this is just a dogma without any foundation infact. (I do not say that, deep in the metaphysical problem ofindividuation, there may not be a point in saying what he says,only that it does not advance the present topic and, if taken asrelevant to the present topic, is false.) Of course there are dif-ferences between "the" and "this." But there are also closeresemblances between the ways in which context, in the widestsense, helps to determine the reference of many "the"-phrasesand the ways in which context helps to determine the reference

of miany -'this"-phrases.And there are no ways peculiar to the

former, as opposed to the latter, in which their contextual de-pendence resembles the contextual dependence of incomplete orelliptical sentences. It does not seem, however, that the contentions of Section IIare of major importance for the rest of Sellars' thesis. (5) I wish now to make certain qualifications of my own thesisas stated in the publications referred to by Sellars. In view ofSellars' approach to the problem, I must first make a remarkabout the relation between two questions: the question whethera statement has a truth-value and the question whether it islinguistically correct to assign it one. When a man says "p" in an ordinary statement-making con-text (i.e., is not telling a story or practicing his pronunciation oracting a part in a play, etc.), his hearers are entitled to assumethat he believes that p.2 This is a tautology. If he says "p" insuch circumstances but does not believe that p, there are at leasttwo possibilities: he may be using language incorrectly or hemay be intending to deceive. We may, if we choose, count thesecond as a special case of the first. Whether or not we chooseto do this, we can say that at least sometimes when a man says"p" and does not believe that p, he is using language incorrectly,whether or not it is the case that p. This will apply as muchto saying that a statement is false as to saying anything else.So I will agree with Sellars that a statement's being false is notthe same as its being linguistically correct for anyone to say thatit is false. But this lack of identity is perfectly general and hasno special relevance to the case of saying that a statement isfalse as opposed to saying anything else. So in what follows Ishall set it aside; and in default of any cogent reason for distin-guishing further between the cases in which a statement is falseand the cases in which it is linguistically correct to say that it isfalse, I shall make no such distinction. Roughly speaking, the thesis I maintained was as follows:(a) that a statement containing I a definite singular description 2This goes also for the presuppositions, if any, of the statement that p.Cf. Sec. (I) of this article. 3 Strictly, here and elsewhere, "a statement made by the use of a sentencecontaining ... 224

was neither true nor false unless there existed something to

which the speaker was referring and which answered to the de-scription; (b) that many statements of the kinds traditionallycalled universal and particular also lacked a truth-value unlessthere existed members of the subiect-class. I shall make myqualifications mainly with reference to (a); the application to(b), where appropriate, is not difficult. The main qualificationthat I want to make is to admit that in certain cases and circum-stancesit may be quite natural and correct to assign a truth-valueto a statement of one of these kinds (to say that it is false or eventhat it is true), even though the condition referred to is not satis-fied. I shall begin by considering two sorts of case in which itmay be correct to say that a statement of one of the kinds inquestion is false, even though the existence-condition is notsatisfied. (Ai) Suppose I make a remark of the form "The S is P,"knowing that there is no S, with the deliberate intention of de-ceiving my hearer.4 Suppose, for example, that I am trying tosell something and say to a prospective purchaser, "The lodgernext door has offered me twice that sum," when there is nolodger next door and I know this. It would seem perfectly cor-rect for the prospective purchaser to reply, "That's false," andto give as his reason the fact that there was no lodger next door.And it would indeed be a lame defense for me to say, "Well,it's not actually false, because, you see, since there's no suchperson, the question of truth or falsity doesn't arise." Both thespeaker, in his attempt to deceive, and the hearer, in rejectingthe speaker's assertion for the reason he gives, are relying on thefact that the speaker, by using the form of words he does, com-mits himself 5 to the existence of a lodger next door. The speakerexploits this logical feature of that form of words to induce abelief which he (and, as it happens, his hearer too) knows to befalse. The word "false" has to a pre-eminent degree the ring ofan accusation of intended deception. The hearer applies it tothe speaker's assertion. What the speaker says is false, is a lie.

' I am indebted to Mr. Stuart Hampshire for pointing this case out to me. "Cf. p. I 7, Introduction to Logical Theory.

Clearly, then, this case calls for some modification of my

thesis. (A2) Let us now consider another kind of case of a statementcontaining a definite description, where nothing answers to thedescription. This kind of case could be characterized by sayingthat the statement in question would be said to be about (in oneuse of "about") something or someone other than the non-existent item to which the descriptive phrase in question refersor purports to refer.6 Suppose I am ignorantly boasting aboutmy friend's visit to Rome and mention the king of France as oneamong the distinguished people he had seen there. I might say,"He had lunch with the prime minister, had an audience of thepope, and then went for a drive with the king of France." Some-one might say, "Well, at least it's false (not true) that he wentfor a drive with the king of France-for there's no such person."Now it is important to note that in this case, where I would besaid to be talking about my friend rather than about the kingof France, it would also be permissible simply to negate thesubject-predicate proposition in the ordinary way, on the strengthof the nonexistence of the king of France; whereas it would notbe permissible to do so in the classical case in which one is takento be talking about the king of France. That is, one could say,"Well, at least he didn't go for a drive with the king of France-for there's no such person"; but one could not normally say,"The king of France isn't wise-for there's no such person."I shall refer later to this remark. Now, to offset these concessions, I want first to make threepoints: (Bi) In a large number of imaginable cases in which there isnothing answering to the descriptive phrase, one would be veryreluctant indeed to say either that the statement in question wastrue or that it was false. I have given examples elsewhere, andSellars does not dispute their existence, so I shall not recapitulatethem here. (B2) Even in the case of deliberate deceit, as in (Ai) above,where it might be natural to call the statement false, it might also 6 Messrs. H. P. Grice and G. J. Warnock have both drawn my attention to

be highly misleading,unless the full circumstances, and, in par-

ticular, one's reason for calling it false, were made known. Andit would be misleading because we are strongly inclined to treatthe singular form "It is false that S is P" as logically equivalentto the singular form "S is not P"; and "S is not P" resembles"S is P" in that he who utters a statement of this form commitshimself to the existence of S. From "It is false (untrue) that thelodger next door has offered him twice that sum" or "Thestatement that the lodger next door has offered him twice thatsum is untrue (false)," one would be justified in concluding,"The lodger next door has not offered him twice that sum,"unless the special circumstances, the special way, in which"false" is being used here, were made plain. (B3) Finally, in some of the cases of the sort we are concernedwith, it seems to me that, if forced to choose between callingwhat was said true or false, we shall be more inclined to say thatit was true. Thus if, in Oxford, I declared, "The WaynfleteProfessor of Logic is older than I am," it would be natural todescribe the situation by saying that I had confused the titles oftwo Oxford professors,7but, whichever one I had meant, whatI had said about him was true. Here it may be remarked thatit is the phrase "what I said" rather than the word "true"which acquires a slightly specialized use. If it is insisted thatwhat I actually said rather than what I meant should be character-ized, then resistance to applying either "true" or "false" oncemore becomes very strong. Similarly, perhaps, if I say, "TheUnited States Chamber of Deputies contains representatives oftwo major parties," I shall be allowed to have said somethingtrue even though I have used the wrong title, a title, in fact,which applies to nothing. If "two" is replaced by "three," whatI said may be called false; and the appropriateness of "false"here rests on the fact that what I was talking about (thoughmisnaming or misdescribing) does not have the property Iascribed to it. The points made so far in this section and the arguments of

7 The Waynflete Professor of Metaphysics and the Wykeham Professor of

previous sections, may, I think, be drawn together into the

following conclusions. (i) There exists, in our ordinary use of language, a strongtendency (though not a rigid rule) for the words "true" and"false" to be used in certain ways in application to large classesof singular, universal, and particular statements, and for certainlogical relationships, associated by way of mutual dependencewith these ways of applying "true" and "false," to be acknowl-edged in our ordinary transitions and arguments. Some of thecrucial relationships and applications concerned are the fol-lowing:(a) The singular form "It is false that the so-and-so is such-and-such(the S is P)" tends to be treated as logically equivalent to "The so-and-so is not such-and-such (the S is not P)."(b) The singular form "The S is P" tends to be treated as the contradic-tory of "The S is not P." The universal form "All S are P," tends to betreated as the contradictory of the particular form, "Some S are notP."3

(c) The two traditional universal forms tend to be treated as contraries,

the two traditional particular forms as subcontraries.(d) There is a tendency to withhold the words "true" and "false" fromstatements of all three kinds when, in the one case, the singular descrip-tion fails to apply to anything or, in the others, the subject-class lacksmembers.The point of the utmost importance here is that all these tend-encies go together, are part of one and the same logical-linguisticphenomenon. They are not-to anticipate my next point-to beseparately and differentlyexplained and justified, as, on Sellars'thesis, they have to be. (ii) Now it is true that Sellars' account can be held in a senseto give an explanation of these facts-in the sense, namely, thatall these facts are covered, allowed for, by his explanation. But(i) his explanation turns on a distinction between a statement'sbeing true or false and its being correct to say that it is true orfalse, the very existence of which (except as a special case ofsomething quite general) is inadequately supported by the argu-ments he uses, while its applicability to the cases in question is

not supported by any arguments at all, but only by the sugges-

tion of an analogy with specially constructed cases. Moreover,(2) there is a suspicious capriciousness about the way in whichthe distinction works out in application to the facts agreed be-tween us. He, as it were, takes for granted the correctness of theanalyses "(ax) [fx. (y) (fy x=y) .gx," "(x) (fx Dgx)," "C(aix)(fx.gx)"for the cases of singular descriptions, affirmative universal, andparticular propositions respectively, and applies his explanationjust as and when it is necessary to adjust the actually observedtendencies to these analyses. For example, he does not have to ex-plain at all, in terms of his account, the tendency for "All S areP" and "Some S are not P" to be treated as contradictories, be-cause this relation happens to be already assured by the analysishe favors. His apparatus has to be applied now in this way, nowin that and sometimes not at all, to a set of phenomena whichare surely systematically connected manifestations of one andthe same linguistic tendency. I conclude that it is not enough forSellars just to fit his explanation on in such a way that it recon-ciles the logical facts of (i) above with the requirements of hischosen analyses. There should also be, as there are not, inde-pendent reasons for accepting the chosen analyses and for ac-cepting his various applications of the doctrine of the distinction between a statement's being true or false and its being correctly said to be so. (iii) My own opposite error, in the first expositions of my thesis, was to canonizethe tendencies noted in (i) and make theminto fixed and rigid rules, whereas we see they have exceptions. I think the truer account of the matter would run as follows:Those uses of "true" and "false" and of the associated logicalrelation words which were canonized in my unqualified doctrineof presupposition are reasonably to be regarded as the primary uses of these words in application to statements of the kinds inquestion. (On Sellars' view, these uses of these words will be insome, but not in all,8 cases secondary.) They yield the standard and customary logic of these statements. Discussion of the truthor falsity of these statements, and comment on their logical rela- 8 Cf. (ii) above on the case of "All S are P" and "Some S are not P" ascontradictories.

tions, are customarily carried on against a certain background

of unquestioned assumption and commitment. When these back- ground assumptions and commitments are called into question, that discussion is, in general, stultified: questions of truth orfalsity no longer arise, etc.9 But sometimes,as in the case (Ai) ofdeliberate deception, where the background assumption is for-cibly thrust forward in a way which points accusingly at thespeaker, the word "false" may acquire a secondaryuse, whichcollides with the primary one; and the customary logical rela- tions, too, are involved in this collision. (I do not say that thecase of deliberate deception is the only one in which this hap-pens.) I am not sure that the other apparent exceptions men-tioned above are genuine exceptions at all. What we do in cases, (B3) for example, where the speaker's intendedreference is prettyclear, is simply to amend his statement in accordance with hisguessed intentions and assess the amendedstatement for truth orfalsity; we are not awarding a truth-value at all to the originalstatement. Case (A2) is an interesting one and merits fuller dis-cussion than I shall give it. Clearly, however, the existence of aking of France is not, in this example, a presupposition of thewhole discussion, as is the existence of the friend whose exploitsI am recounting. The informal indication of this is that in nosense could the king of France be said to be the themeof myremarks. The formal indication is that the phrase purporting torefer to him does not figure as a grammatical subject and can beregarded as simply a part of a grammatical predicatewhich lacksapplication. But we should not find this formal indication inevery such case. (iv) It should now be clear that the dispute between Sellarsand myself could disappear completely if he would agree-touse a phrase of Professor Ryle's-that we are not producingcompeting solutions to the same problem but noncompetingsolutions to different problems. That is to say, I should representmyself as trying to describe the actual logical features of ordi-nary speech in this region; and he might perhaps agree to regardhimself as offering a theoretical construction designed to answer

the following theoretical question: Assuming that there existed

a language having the structure of the skeleton language of theelementary parts of PrincipiaMathematica,how might there bedeveloped from it a language having the logical features whichwe both agree to note in our own? (v) Finally, in order to avoid misunderstanding, I must recalla point about my use of such expressions as "contradictories,""logically equivalent," "subcontraries," etc.'0 It might bethought, for example, that in saying that "All S are P" and"Some S are not P" are contradictories, I am saying that itmust be the case that, of two statements of these forms with thesame fillings and the same intended reference, one is true andthe other false, and thus that I am saying something inconsistentwith the claim that both statements may lack a truth-value.Similarly in saying that "It is false that the S is P" and "The Sis not P" are logically equivalent forms, I might be thought tobe saying that two statements of these forms with the same fillingand the same intended reference must both be true or both befalse and thus again to be contradicting my own thesis. But avery simple amendment removes all such worries. All that is re-quired is the insertion into such definitions of these terms of theproviso that both statements have a truth-value; thus, e.g., tosay that two statements are logically equivalent is to say thatif both have a truth-value, then both must have the same truth-value. P. F. STRAWSONUniversity College, Oxford